1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a backlight assembly and a liquid crystal display (LCD) device having the backlight assembly. More particularly, the present invention relates to a backlight assembly capable of reverse phase driving to improve an image display quality and an LCD device having the backlight assembly.
2. Description of the Related Art
A liquid crystal display (LCD) device, in general, displays an image using liquid crystals that have an optical characteristic such as anisotropy of refractivity and an electrical characteristic such as anisotropy of dielectric constant. The LCD device has advantageous characteristics such as thinness, lower driving voltage, lower power consumption, etc., than other types of display devices such as cathode ray tube (CRT) device, plasma display panel (PDP) device, etc. Therefore, the LCD device is used widely in various display fields.
The LCD device includes a thin film transistor (TFT) substrate, a color filter substrate and a liquid crystal layer. The color filter substrate corresponds to the TFT substrate. The liquid crystal layer is interposed between the TFT substrate and the color filter substrate. The LCD device being a non-emissive type display device, it requires a backlight assembly to supply an LCD panel of the LCD device with light.
When the size of an LCD device is increased, the size of its backlight assembly is also increased. Thus, a large screen LCD device having a direct illumination type backlight assembly includes a plurality of lamps that are on a rear surface of the LCD panel. Often, these lamps are arranged so that they are substantially parallel to each other, to directly shine light onto the LCD panel.
The number of lamps in the direct illumination type backlight assembly is increased. When the direct illumination type backlight assembly includes external electrode fluorescent lamps (EEFL) that are connected in parallel to each other, the manufacturing cost is decreased and the driving of the lamps is stabilized.
In a conventional direct illumination type backlight assembly, end portions of the EEFLs are electrically connected to a conductive fixing member so that lamp driving electric powers that are applied to the EEFLs have a same phase with respect to each other.
When the driving voltages having the same phase are applied to adjacent EEFLs, an electromagnetic interference is formed between the adjacent EEFLs so that noise of a waterfall curve is generated between the adjacent EEFLs to deteriorate an image display quality of the LCD device.